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Wednesday May 15, 2013
People
This is Alan Bennett's new play about.... what .... I am wondering.
That may sound like a bad start - but it was a great play, with so much in it that I find it hard to distil it down to a single grand point. Indeed, Robert certainly had an interpretation, centring on politics of the 1980s, and thus obviously pit closures. Myself, I think it's easy to see it as a generic criticism of the National Trust organization - but I can't think it's that, or even that Bennett dislikes it with such a passion that he was driven to write an entire play about it. I think more that it's a about a sense of loss of the past - what was every day life becomes no longer ordinary and thus no longer to be taken for granted. And though it's not so much that you should not try to preserve it, but that you cannot really preserve it, because it is no longer ordinary. As with relativity - you observe it closely, and it changes - becomes a "Pretend England"
This short film People: A Pretend England is well worth the 8 minutes - and Bennett himself describes his feelings about the play.
This image below makes the play look rather manic - which it is not - but Rob loved Linda Bassett's slippers, so I am including it for that...
Posted by Christina at 11:24 PM. Category: Art and Culture
Comments
Very interesting. I recently read James Lees Milne's autobiography in which he was involved with the early days of the National Trust during and after WWII. Although I have no sympathy for the aristocracy the burden of maintaining these great houses was intolerable: high taxes, often no heirs, high maintenance bills. It was a fascinating read!
Posted by: Alison on May 20, 2013 11:18 PM
